Idlewild Promises To Gratify Fans Quicker With Early Direct Release -- Hey, No Snickering

By C. Schell on

You think Radiohead or David Byrne or Trent Reznor or Girl Talk had unique distribution models? Well, Scottish outfit Idlewild are taking distribution to new heights with the announcement that fans can now pre-order the band's new album BEFORE IT IS EVEN RECORDED.

According to the album's website, the group is offering a chance to buy (for £15, or about $22) a limited-edition CD and free download of the to-be-recorded album, plus at least one bonus track, which will all come within weeks of the LP's completion. The album will be the band's sixth, following 2007's Make Another World (Sanctuary Records).

Your £15 also gets you:

- 15 download tracks of your choosing from live recordings of the band's series of "album by album" shows (where the band plays an entire album each night for five nights) in Glasgow this December
- your name in an album booklet and on a roll-call on the website, and
- exclusive access to a members-only area of the Idlewild website.

If you are wondering who is going to buy into this, then you probably don't live in the United Kingdom. Since forming in late 1995, Idlewild have had much success across the pond, placing 17 singles on the UK Singles Chart, with 4 of them reaching the Top 20. Meanwhile, American fans keep confusing the band with "that Outkast movie [they] heard was shitty."

The group is hoping, not guaranteeing, that the record will be available for consumption in April, although they do say with more certainty, and generality, that it will be "way before any general release," which would likely occur some time in the summer of next year.

Tourdates:

@ - playing Hope Is Important & more

# - playing 100 Broken Windows

% - playing The Remote Part

^ - playing Warnings/Promises & acoustic set

& - playing Captain & Make Another World

President Bush Pardons John Forté, Shyne Still Lacking Necessary Political Clout

By Nat Towsen on 12-09-2008

What would you do if you were President for two months and nothing you did mattered? I would probably do exactly what President Bush is currently doing, which is pardon the shit out of a bunch of people for no reason. On November 24, he pardoned former Fugees producer John Forté, during the eighth year of his 14-year prison sentence. In 2000, Forté was caught at Newark International Airport with over $1.4 million in liquid cocaine. He was found guilty on charges of intent to distribute and conspiracy to distribute, and was sentenced to 14 years in low-security federal prison. When asked to comment on his pardon of Forté, President Bush responded, "Who?"

In the years since his arrest, Forté has received support from Carly Simon (for whom he has sung backup vocals and who posted his $250,000 bail) and her son Ben Taylor, who believe that Forté did not receive a fair trial. Also chief among their beliefs is that (contrary to the implication of several tapped phone calls) Forté did not realize that the briefcase he was carrying contained cocaine. Taylor originally met Forté through a cousin who was Forté's classmate at Phillips Exeter. Remy Ma, still in prison, probably wishes she had gone to college right about now, as fiancé Papoose's form of advocacy seems to have failed.

President-Elect Obama has declared that one of his first acts as President will be to shoot John Forté with a tranquilizer dart and drag him back to prison so that he may serve out the rest of his sentence, demanding, "Did anyone else read the part about 1.4 million dollars worth of coke?"

Akron/Family Sign to Dead Oceans; Green Day Mentioned in This Story

By Mango Starr on 12-09-2008

Akron/Family have left their home at Young God to sign with Dead Oceans. The label will release the group's fourth, currently untitled album in April 2009, which will act as both their follow-up to Love Is Simple (TMT Review) and their first recording as a three-piece (like Green Day!). Recording began in Farham, Quebec back in early October.

"There were other record labels that we liked, but Dead Oceans/Secretly Canadian/Jagjaguwar was our number one first choice," Miles Seaton tells Billboard. "It was really exciting that they were interested in us."

He goes on to explain more about the new record:

I wouldn't say out of the box we sound like a whole new band, but there's a couple of extreme elements on this record. There's one track that emphasizes our fondness for extreme noise and painful, almost guttural sounds -- raw, primal noise. We've alluded to those things, but I think there are a few moments that are mashing all those sounds together, into hopefully, one seven-minute prog masterpiece.

Dead Oceans also signed These Are Powers and White Hinterland earlier this year. I have yet to get a deal.

RIP: Dennis Yost of Classics IV

By Shane Mack on 12-09-2008

From Classics IV's official website:

Dennis Yost, lead singer of The Classics IV, the 1960's soft rock group responsible for hit records such as "Spooky," "Stormy," "Everyday With You Girl," and most notably the group's highest charting record, "Traces of Love," passed away suddenly early Sunday morning, December 7th, in a hospital on the outskirts of Cincinnati, OH with his wife Linda at his side. Dennis was 65 years of age.

Yost, who had been hospitalized in 2005 for a traumatic brain injury sustained after a fall, never fully recovered from the incident, however the cause of death is not believed to be related. A benefit concert, hosted by Jon "Bowzer" Bauman of Sha Na Na fame, was held last year to help raise money for increasing medical costs the Yosts were incurring. Several of Dennis' musical peers showed up to perform, including Mark "Flo" Volman of The Turtles, The Skyliners, Chuck Negron, formerly of Three Dog Night, and many others.

The Classics IV originally hailed from Jacksonville, Florida, where Yost was raised by his mother Marie Lupato, but recorded all of their hit recordings in Atlanta, GA under the supervision of producer Buddy Buie and Bill Lowery, founder of Lowery Music, Inc. In 1993, Dennis Yost & The Classics IV were inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.

In the mid 90's, Dennis received a letter of cease and desist, ordering him to stop using the name "The Classics IV" from a lawyer representing a bogus band who had acquired the trademark through other means. Yost sank into a depression as he continued to tour, hopeless that he would ever get the name he helped make famous back, while another group with no original members reaped the profits. Fortunately, in the latter part of 2000, Yost regained ownership of the trademark to "The Classics IV" as part of an out-of-court settlement. A documentary on Yost's struggles is currently in post-production.

Dennis was the last touring member of the original Classics IV.

- Classics IV official website

Blur to Officially Reunite at London’s Hyde Park, But Who Cares Because Thom Yorke Is Growing His Ponytail Out Again!

By Mango Starr on 12-09-2008

If the press were always right, Blur would have reunited like 20 times already in the past two years. We at TMT have mainly tried to stick our noses out of the Blur Reunion Mill and into the asses of Radiohead (didn't we report a story about Thom Yorke's chapped lips?), but the time has come to join our fellow "journalists" in announcing Blur's super duper official reunion!

On July 3, Blur will be headlining an open-air show in Hyde Park, London, featuring the group's original lineup of Damon Albarn, drummer Dave Rowntree, bassist Alex James, and the mighty Graham Coxon. And since we are talking about a UK, NME-hyped band here, there's also a rumor that Blur will be headlining Glastonbury in June, but obviously there has been no official confirmation from the festival organizers or from me, Mango Starr.

The show will mark their first time on stage together since a Royal Festival Hall performance in 2000. Blur's last album was the horribly underrated Think Tank.

Tickets for the Hyde Park show go on sale here this Friday. Hey, wasn't that dude on That ’70s Show named Hyde? Coincidence? I don't think so!! Dude's in Blur now!!

Animal Collective Talk “Visual Record,” Hippie Population Listens

By Nobodaddy on 12-09-2008

Presidential Briefing – December 8, 2008

Welcome to the new war on drugs, Mr. President. Please meet our secret weapon, Avey Tare.

That’s right, Mr. President. In cooperation with the UN, the special international task force code-named “Animal Collective” has announced plans to initiate its latest offensive in the ongoing battle against drug-abuse among the prime demographic (music listeners) under the cover generated by its highly-anticipated decoy album Merriweather Post Pavilion, which hits stores January 20 of 2009. With the drug-addled youth thus districted, Avey, Panda, and Geologist (more code names, sir) will undertake a cunning plan to diffuse the necessity of hallucinogenic drug abuse while listening to an Animal Collective record by (and my God Almighty have mercy on them if they should fail) supplying their OWN psychotropic visuals with their next dose of, er... of what the military calls “youth music.”

Agent Dave Portner (Avey Tare) describes the project as a “visual record” that he hopes will deter and/or discourage his listeners from indulging in the illegal ingestion of illicit hallucinogenic substances. “The lines were really blurry when we started," Agent Porter stated in a recently staged press conference, already speaking in character. "It was going to be a film, like a feature film, but by no means a narrative. It's more collaborative, between us and our friend Danny Perez, who did one of our music videos."

Portner went on to insinuate that Perez has been working on the visuals for the as-yet-untitled project for more than two years, so as to buildup the expectation of the target demographic audience, and that the “band” will be providing the accompanying music. "This year, we got to a place where we can start doing demos and nailing all the sounds down, while we're at home," Agent Portner explained skillfully, sounding every bit as much like a “popular musician” (such as Brandon Flowers or fellow government agent “Rockwell”) as officials present at the conference could have hoped. “It's something new for all of us,” he concluded. “It's been a work-as-we-go process.” Our research shows that drug users respond positively to this kind of casual slang and lack of concrete release dates or album titles, and we are hopeful that the as-of-yet untitled “visual record” project will finally put an end to this epidemic of music-related drug use.

Meanwhile, as a distractionary measure, Project “Animal Collective” will “take to the road” in January around the launch of Merriweather Post Pavilion, via our partners at Domino. After seven European dates, the band will play New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles on January 20, 22, and 23, respectively. We’ve got those fiends on the ropes this time, Mr. President. I can feel it.

Project “Animal Collective” Dates (Declassified):

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